Little Goffy

Likely to be dropped with Viney coming back in but I am pretty confident in Sparrow's future and I hope he is too.

Noticed that but he seemed to also make a whole bunch of guess predictions about other incidents so it is quite possible he's just making it all up and will later if his guesses miss he can just say the tribunal got it wrong.

Kieran Strachan vs Max Gawn. 25 year old playing their second game in their third year on the Crows rookie list. Tough gig but we've seen a number of times already how fringe rucks have come in and competed hard and well against Gawn. I would imagine there's a certain liberation to knowing that there's no contest for 'total quality and ability' and your only option is to do the team things and focus on having a crack. Could be interesting.

Surely after the earlier loss we'll be sharp for this game. I for one am feeling outright vengeful. The loss to Adelaide was built entirely on creeping complacency and an exposure of the chink in our defensive armour when the opposition just hurtle it through the corridor at maximum risk-reward. Solidly defeating the Crows today requires only that we attend to those two factors. But once that much is sorted I am focused on the 'aspirational goal' of really, really punishing that noxious club.

The article and the story behind it would seem to have so much dignity and humanity that the only reason to comment is to add affirmation. I did find myself wondering about the Brayshaw brothers and family. One good player, one superstar in the making and one who hasn't quite made it and meanwhile the family home is constantly packed with a production line of young star footballers being helped to settle in Melbourne.

I've seen similar charts before (that were actually properly explained) and the 'games lost from 22' was based on which players were considered in the team's best 22 and how many games they had been injured. I've never liked it much as a statistic because the starting point for the calculation is a completely subjective assessment of the 'best 22'. I wonder how they are assembling our 25 games missed? Tomlinson, obviously, and then how much of Brown and Weideman's early season? Are they both best 22? Were they out of it early because of injury? Anyway, the club invested very heavily in the best possible conditioning leaders they could find and they have established really good professional habits. This stat, 'soft' as it is, is nothing more than delivering on that investment.

I actually do believe that the North Smith curse has been cleansed. Very simply, we are from tip to toe a club with a culture to be proud of both as a competitive unit and as human beings. If we win a premiership, we will deserve it.

We should all be watching Tom Stewart's medical report to find out if the pre-finals bye is still on. If it is 2-4 weeks then the rest week is definite on.

Just flicking it around in my head - anyone else able to enlighten me about Dylan Stephens' situation? Could we offer him membership in the wingers club?

Is anyone else quietly hoping that North upset Sydney today? North plays Adelaide next week and with a Kangaroo win today and a really good percentage-smashing of Adelaide tomorrow it would actually make next weeks' game a wooden spoon battle. With Jason Horne on the line, I could see the Crows losing that one while North's recovery through the second half of the season deserves better than the spoon. Full credit to North - after the bye they've gone 3W 1D 5L and not a single blowout loss in it. That's really impressive in a season that started as badly as Melbourne 2013 (No, wait, nope, nope, just because everyone thought they might go winless for the year doesn't make it that bad...)

All the surnames are shared with a famous person who's first name is Barry. Possibly vice presidents of the United States? No, no. I'm afraid my gabber is truly flastered.

He was beginning to find some good form at Casey before his calf strain. He's not completely cooked but it would be a difficult path back. Stranger things have happened in football than a veteran club champion being recalled to play a role following injury or form fades to others.

While we're in the hunt for free kick data, I'd be fascinated to see a timeline of them over the course of games. I'm absolutely sure that much of the differential in our game against West Coast game in a couple of bursts, most notably the alarming one right after the restart. Would be interesting to see the extent of a relationship between free kick 'momentum' and overall game momentum. Before? After? Side by side?

I'm going to guess that Faulty is referring to the fact that a large majority black population was oppressed and discriminated against by a white minority.

In a way, that's exactly what I mean. The way racism just keeps rearing up again and again in big or small, obvious or underhanded ways is making Aboriginal people pessimistic. It would make anyone pessimistic in the same circumstance. For every Aboriginal person in Australia it is just that much harder to believe that if you make the effort you'll get the reward. That's a deep cut. You could watch Eddie Betts interview on Fox Footy as if it was a short film titled "Typically upbeat man struggles to keep pessimism away." 4 minute video - Link: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-news-taylor-walker-racism-eddie-betts-video-adelaide-crows-suspension-future/news-story/2df3d11d766ebe3c89b4508a0549c412

I sniff only one source of danger in this game. Now that both Walker and O'Brien are out the Crows may decide to go all-out with smalls scrambling and grubbing it along. That doesn't favour our defensive method and won't give us the intercept marks we like to counter-attack from. Of course they might go with a Fogarty-Himmelberg-Thilthorpe tall forward line and rotate 'someone' through the ruck. In which case we'll likely just bite their heads off and spit them into a pile. Worth noting that if we can hit their percentage enough, it will be Adelaide vs North for the spoon in the final round. All the Adelaide 2021 season needs now is a tanking scandal and it would be complete.

I just watched Eddie Betts' short video on Fox Footy about how it was affecting him and it really prompted one very clear thought in my head. Eddie knows Taylor Walker, worked with him for years. Walker was his captain for a time and also a vital person to work with in that Adelaide forward line. Eddie has to digest the idea that all along when people were directing racist abuse at him and others, his former captain and very close colleague had a bit of underground sympathy for all that ####. Now that Pickett also has been abused it gives us a very close to home analogy. A part of Kozzie's mind has to be considering the idea that any given one of his teammates, his captain, his forward line colleagues, might quietly be all right with it, too. Then Pickett, a young player in a role which is exposed to bad days no matter how good you are, also has to process the possibility that maybe there's a midfielder who would rather honour someone else's lead or there's a voice on the selection committee that still thinks Aboriginal people lack the discipline to train properly and that's why Pickett's form is up and down. And if he has the courage to stand up to the little signs and ambiguous comments, he runs the risk of being perceived as 'oversensitive' and going down the Lamumba path, or even getting his own experience of the Goodes disaster. What a trap. You're in it even if you're not in it - the Melbourne Football Club could be a true haven of decency but no Indigenous player could be sure.

Funny way to present the percentages. It's really a domino-effect where if Melbourne plays Geelong then Dogs will play Port. It's basically 50/50 that the entire top four will have replays, with the only other factor being if one of them loses BOTH remaining games AND one of the Lions or Swans win both of theirs. The top four could actually be locked in for replays by the end of this round because when Melbourne and Geelong play obviously one goes up and the other goes down, resulting in either a 1st/4th or 3rd/2nd split. Would be funny to go into that final round game already knowing that we'd be playing the next game as well. Just indulging in some even sillier speculation; we could conceivable play Geelong in the final round, the first round of finals, and then in the Grand final again. If nothing else, surely that would earn us the right to not have to meet them in 2022. There's only so much Geelong anyone can be expected to put up with.

There will be some shuffling in the last couple of rounds. Of course like all of us I'm hoping that Jones finds the marathon runner's second wind, comes back from the calf next week and then plays his best football through the finals to a premiership. But, setting aside that triumphant return, here's how it looks to me; B: Petty May Bowey HB: Salem Lever Rivers C: Langdon Petracca Brayshaw HF: Spargo McDonald Neal-Bullen F: Fritsch Brown Pickett FOLL: Gawn, Oliver, Harmes INT: Jordon, Jackson, Viney, Hibberd (or Hunt if available) EMRG: Sparrow, Weideman, Jones, and then Hibberd or a 'Wildcard' Bowey has just been amazing. Calm and composed and I think he made just one actual mistake the whole game. You'd also have Jordon and particularly Jackson on the field as much as anyone in that positional 22. But then it gets trickier. Likely a half-back type to allow for some young guys that could have off days and benefit from freedom to go up the ground and take less immediate pressure. I would assume Hibberd if Hunt isn't available. Melksham is a no for me. It may have been the right choice on the night given the conditions in Perth but I feel like his successes were more a product of the role than the player. A bit like the baseball assessment of 'wins over replacement'; take Melksham out and there's plenty to replace him who are as good as or maybe even better. My gut feeling is that Melksham's presence actually pushed all of Spargo, Pickett and Fritsch into slightly less comfortable roles for them - all three had very bad nights against West Coast. With Brown's returning to form it's pretty clear Weideman will be an emergency every game for the rest of the season.

Sadly, Vandenberg looks slow, clumsy and confused out there and simply doesn't have enough 'upside' to justify trying to build some form into him this close to an attack on the premiership. It's an easier call than Melksham, who at least did the things he was in the team to do (2 goals, 2 goal assists) but he didn't really contribute to the essential forward pressure and those dumb free kicks in the final quarter were momentum-swinging. Neither are really in our best 22 and I'll be watching for news on Jones' progress intensely because if he can get his gears working smoothly then we want his head and heart on the field for finals.

Sorry if I missed someone already explaining it, but does anyone know why the West Coast supporters were booing at the end of the game? Can't be umpiring - the final count was 28-17 and the string of frees after the reset helped enormously (cough... Melksham... cough... no finals for you) Can't be because the team disappointed them; they gave a good fight against the top team for most of the game and that post-reset surge was alarming. Are that just that sulky? Did they see a cloud that looked like it was asserting Indigenous pride?

They'll Neeld a whole new coach to deliver on that ambition.

The depths of your ignorance of global history ironically displays your Eurocentric worldview.

Your rhetorical method is odious and dishonest and it detracts from a crucial cause.